Four hours before the alleyway, I was exactly where I always was: invisible.
My name is Leo. If you looked through the Harding High yearbook, you wouldn't find many pictures of me, but you’d see hundreds of pictures taken by me. I was the kid in the background, the one holding the camera, adjusting the aperture, fading into the scenery while the rest of the school lived their loud, dramatic lives.
That was how I survived. My mom worked double shifts as a clerk at the county courthouse just to keep our tiny apartment heated during the brutal New England winters. We couldn’t afford trouble. We couldn't afford a lawyer, or a scandal, or anything that would draw the gaze of the wealthy families who essentially owned the town.
Chief among them were the Hardings.
Mayor Harding controlled the town’s real estate, the police budget, and the school board. His youngest son, Chase, walked through the hallways like he possessed the deed to the floor tiles. Chase was the quarterback, the prom king, the untouchable center of gravity.
But Chase carried a ghost.
Ten months ago, his older brother Ryan—the original Golden Boy, the one who was supposed to go to the NFL—died in a fiery car crash on the winding roads near Lake Lawson. The official police report said Ryan took a corner too fast in the rain. The whole town mourned. They put up a memorial plaque in the gymnasium. Everyone treated Chase with a fragile, reverent pity.
I never bought into the myth of the Hardings, but I kept my head down.
Until fourth period.
I was in the old photography darkroom, searching for a specific wide-angle lens in the storage cabinets. The room smelled of chemical developer and dust. I reached behind a heavy wooden drawer that had jammed off its tracks. My fingers brushed against something hard, plastic, and unfamiliar.
I pulled it out.
It was a smartphone wrapped in a neon pink, heavy-duty case. The bottom corner of the screen was shattered, spider-webbed with fine cracks. It was dead, coated in a thick layer of dust.
Curiosity got the better of me. I blew the dust off the charging port and plugged it into the emergency charger I kept in my camera bag. For five minutes, nothing happened. I assumed the battery was completely fried. I went back to organizing the chemical trays, almost forgetting about it.
Then, the screen flared to life.
It bypassed the passcode screen completely, rebooting straight into a chaotic mess of overlapping notifications. I picked it up, my brow furrowing. The background photo was a picture of the lake.
The phone had zero cellular service, but the moment it caught the school’s Wi-Fi network, a backlog of text messages began flooding in. They were all from a contact listed only as 'M.H.'
I didn't want to pry, but the preview text on the locked screen caught my eye, and my lungs tightened.
M.H: He’s lying.
M.H: The police report is fake.
M.H: Ryan wasn't driving that night, Chase. You were.
My breath caught in my throat. I stared at the glowing screen, the words burning themselves into my retinas.
Ryan wasn't driving.
I knew the name Maya Hayes. She was Ryan’s girlfriend. After Ryan’s death, she had quietly vanished. The school rumor was that she was so overcome with grief that she moved out of state to live with her aunt. Nobody had heard from her in ten months.
If this was Maya's old phone... what the hell was it doing jammed behind a cabinet in the darkroom? And why was there a message drafted to Chase Harding accusing him of killing his own brother?
I quickly disconnected the charger, my hands shaking. The phone’s battery read 4%. I shoved the neon pink device deep into the bottom pocket of my canvas backpack, right next to my own cracked, outdated phone.
I needed to think. I needed to get this to the police. But Mayor Harding essentially paid the police salaries.
The warning bell rang, jarring me out of my thoughts. I threw my backpack over my shoulder and hurried out into the crowded hallway. I kept my eyes on the floor, trying to blend into the stream of students heading for the exit.
But I wasn't invisible enough.
As I passed the trophy case, I accidentally bumped shoulders with Brody, one of Chase’s massive offensive linemen.
"Watch it, ghost," Brody snapped, shoving me back.
My heavy backpack swung forward, hitting the glass of the trophy case with a loud thud. The zipper on the front pocket tore open slightly.
I scrambled to catch the bag, but not before Chase Harding, who was leaning against the lockers talking to a cheerleader, turned his head. His cold blue eyes swept over me in disgust, then dropped to my bag.
He saw a flash of neon pink inside the open zipper.
I watched the color drain completely from Chase’s face. For a split second, the arrogant quarterback disappeared, replaced by a panicked, desperate animal. He knew exactly what that phone looked like. He had clearly been the one who hid it, or at least he knew it had been lost in the school.
I quickly zipped the bag shut, my heart hammering against my ribs, and pushed my way through the double doors into the humid afternoon air. I walked fast, my sneakers slapping against the pavement. I didn't look back. I just needed to get home, lock my door, and figure out exactly what was on that device.
I took the shortcut. The narrow brick alleyway that ran behind the school’s cafeteria and the old gymnasium. It was shaded, quiet, and usually empty.
I was halfway down the alley when I heard the heavy, synchronized footsteps echoing behind me.
Before I could turn, a large hand clamped onto the back of my neck.
I was violently shoved forward. I spun around, raising my arms, but a second shove hit my chest. My shoulders slammed violently against the rough brick wall. A sharp pain radiated through my ribs. The impact knocked the wind entirely out of me.
My canvas bag slid off my shoulder. I desperately reached into the front pocket as I fell. I grabbed the first hard, plastic rectangle my fingers touched and yanked it out, trying to keep it away from them.
It slipped from my fingers, hitting the concrete with a loud clatter.